The weeks and months after that all bled into each other to form one long, airless vacuum. I pushed everything inwards: tried to nail a brave face on and keep moving. I guess I thought that by going through the motions, things would eventually get back to normal. But they didn’t.

Daff tried to help, to get closer to me, to console me. I lost count of the nights she came home early, or the days she took off work. She’d grip my hand and pull me close, and beg me to talk to her – or talk to someone else: a friend, a therapist, a bereavement counsellor. But every time, I just pushed her away. I didn’t see how talking could change anything. Talking wouldn’t bring Mum back.

I went back to temping. A different office, but equally dull and monotonous. And every night, after eight hours of typing and smiling and making small talk, I would go into the grotty public toilets by the Tube station near work and cry until my throat was raw.

Because I think it was only then, in those weeks that followed, that I really started to process it all. Mum had been the one constant in my life. She had always been there, and now, suddenly – inexplicably – she wasn’t. She was my only real family. And she was gone.

I never even got to say goodbye. Or, more importantly, to apologise. Because the last time I’d seen her … well, it didn’t even bear thinking about. That was the worst thing – the thing I never told anyone, not even Daphne. The last things I ever said to Mum were so horrible, so childish, so spiteful. And when she died, I wished with every fibre of my being that I could take them back. But I couldn’t.

So instead I buried them, deep down inside me, and left them there to fester.

‘Ben?’

Mum’s voice breaks in again, drifting up from the kitchen, and I realise I’m still crying.

I can hear her feet starting to pad softly up the stairs. ‘It’s after eleven! Daphne will be here any minute!’

Chapter Fourteen

Without thinking, I leap out of bed and sprint across the corridor into the bathroom.

‘One second,’ I gulp, as I lock the door and duck my hot, streaming face under the cold tap.

‘Well don’t be too long,’ I hear her shout over the rushing water. ‘She’ll be arriving any time now.’